The present invention relates to the field of small lamps of the kind commonly referred to as spotlights that are intended more particularly for mounting to a tensioned ceiling, i.e. a ceiling constituted by a sheet of plastics material, generally polyvinyl chloride (PVC), mounted under tension by appropriate means.
It is now becoming more and more commonplace to mount bulbs for lighting or “spotlights” by fitting them directly to the ceiling. Under such circumstances, the bulb is substantially flush with the plane of the ceiling and is surrounded by an annular collar for finishing off the visual appearance of the hole made in the ceiling where the bulb is received.
With a tensioned ceiling, a spotlight is put into place by means firstly of a reinforcing washer and secondly of a structural element referred to as a spot plate. The reinforcing washer is stuck to the visible face of the tensioned ceiling. It is annular in shape with a circular inside opening within which the sheet constituting the ceiling is pierced. The reinforcing washer serves mainly to prevent any damage to the sheet while cutting out the opening for passing the bulb.
The structural element or “spot plate” is fixed rigidly above the tensioned ceiling. It carries an electrical transformer and comprises a plate that comes up to the rear face of the tensioned ceiling, said plate itself being partially open to receive the bulb.
In order to be fixed on top of the reinforcing washer, the collar of the spotlight is fitted with snap-fastening means suitable for coming down onto the back face of the plate of the structural element. Thus, after the bulb has been inserted and fixed onto the collar, the collar and the bulb are themselves supported by the fixed structural element.
The drawback of that solution lies mainly in the need to install a structural element that is to be fixed rigidly, thereby complicating the fitting of spotlights and making such fitting more expensive. In addition, it is not very easy to remove the spotlight, since after the bulb has been taken away it is necessary to have access to the snap-fastening means which are on the rear face of the structural element.
A more simple solution has already been proposed in which the collar of the spotlight is not supported by a fixed structural element but is supported by the tensioned ceiling itself. In that solution, the collar of the spotlight is provided with tongues that can be folded down. The tongues have a first position in which they penetrate through the opening formed in the tensioned ceiling in the central portion of the reinforcing washer, and a second position in which they are folded down against the rear face of the tensioned ceiling, in the zone that is stuck to the reinforcing washer. It is thus in this second position that the collar of the spotlight is held in place, being supported by the tensioned ceiling via the reinforcing washer.
Nevertheless, that new solution is not completely satisfactory. The manufacture of a collar with tongues that can be folded down is more complex. In addition, removing a collar that has already been installed in a tensioned ceiling is difficult since it is possible to access the folded-down tongues only via the central opening in the collar. Finally, while they are being manipulated, the tongues can break in their hinge-forming zones.